No scrubs (AM)

Guess what I'm doing? Or NOT doing more like it? 

That's right readers. I'm not washing my hair. I've thought about it for ages and now I'm finally doing it. 

As you all know, I pretty much hate my hair all of the time. Sure, I have the occasional day where it looks half decent, but most of the time it's a mess that I don't know what to do with. The not washing phenomenon (or 'no poo' as the Internet calls it, or 'no scrubs' as I like to call it) which J and my former hairdresser was a fan of, seems like it could be perfect for me. Apparently it lets hair reclaim it's natural waves, which I know are there beneath all the frizz. Apparently it makes hair look lighter, which if true will help me kill another bird with the same stone, that being the bird that chirps to me about dying my hair blonde. It could be the answer to my prayers. Of course if could also look really really shit, which is absolutely not one of my prayers. Early indications are not good. It's been about 10 days and as you can see from the above, hair ain't be wavin', hair be frizzin'. Here's another shot. 

Oh, I should mention that I  washing my fringe because it just looks too shit without it. But everything else is strictly no scrubs. 

Oh, and here's a walnut stuffed shortbread I ate today. Delicious. 

But back to the hair. J is really my inspiration for this. She didn't wash her hair for a year and her hair looked awesome. It filled me with awe! It looked excellent every day for a year. If I could have just a little bit of her success I would be over the moon. I plan to blog about it regularly so we can all go on this scrubleas journey together. Away we go, readers. 

Project Chocolate Cake - the beginning.

This week, K and I are gonna get experimental on yo' asses. K's gonna start explaining.
 
K: The other day, I was looking for a chocolate brownie recipe. Now I like my brownie to be fudgey, not cakey. But if there is a slight hint of cakey - only very slight - well that's OK by me. However, while I know this is how I like my brownie to taste, I can't look at a recipe and figure out whether that's going to deliver me the right kind of brownie for me. The way people talk about their brownies helps. Some would come right out and say "this is a very fudgey brownie". And then I could look at the ingredients and figure out why. But you know how it is...there are so many goddamn recipes out there and you start to get mixed up and really hungry and sooner or later you just make a call. Anyway, the other day I wrote down a matrix with all the key brownie ingredients on one side, and all the different brownie recipes I liked the look of up to the top. Then I filled in all the details and it was a goddamned revelation. Soon, it became quite clear that there was no effing way I was going to pursue the recipe with HALF the chocolate of most of them, or the one with TWICE the sugar of most of them. It was very, very educational. I could easily see which recipe had the most butter/chocolate/eggs etc., which, when considered alongside the recipes' descriptions of how fudgey or cakey or whatever the brownie is, I could start to figure out why.


Of course I could only pick one, but there were some others that I really wanted to try too. That's when I thought that maybe we could use this system to find perfect recipes for other things. We could nominate some recipes we like the look of, then draw up a matrix...

J: Well, a while ago I was interested in finding a great, go-to chocolate cake recipe and I am still very much am interested in that…

K: I'm glad you're open to comparative baking experiments. And like you, I would love a basic go-to chocolate cake so it makes sense that we try that.


J: You know I have this problem generally that although I know everyone has different feelings and opinions to me, my first reaction is to interpret everything through my own beliefs. Like if I read a recipe for "best brownies" I assume they will be fudgey and crackly on top and delicious but of course the author may have totally different feelings about brownies. Of course if there is more information I can interpret that but without it I just assume the world would do and want as I do.

I'm definitely into using chocolate cake to experiment with. It's hard though, you know, like Deb has this light, airy, cake which is delicious, but is that what I want as my number 1 cake recipe? I think I want a denser one. All good chocolate cake is delicious in its own way, but I guess I need to figure out what I am really looking for.
 
K: That's right! I think we all read what we want to read in to recipes. And without proper baking knowledge, it's hard to read a recipe and see how it is going to make a brownie fudgey in the middle and crackly on top. So we rely on words like 'best' and get excited, sometimes for no reason at all. Obviously baking more is a way around this. But I want to bake more + understand more and do so in a systematic way. Rely less on the words and more on an ability to read a list of ingredients and a method and be able to think well, I can imagine how those babies will turn out and I'm interested. 
And as for chocolate cake, I think the things you raise are absolutely important for finding the right recipe. What we are looking for in a go-to chocolate cake? Because if we don't know what we are looking for, then how will we know when we get there? Huh?

And of course, we don't need to be looking for the same thing necessarily. Though I think in this case we will be.

Ok, my situation, for me: I don't want a chocolate cake that is too light and airy, and nor do I want a chocolate cake that is too heavy and dense. I want something that is in between. This is not something that is easy to come across. So often, chocolate cakes swing towards the super duper decadent. That ain’t right for me. Because it basically means that it is only OK to have it as dessert. And if I want a chocolate dessert, there are so many places I can go. Chocolate tart, chocolate mousse, chocolate gelati, chocolate self-saucing pudding. But cake, man. Cake is for the afternoon. Not exclusively, obviously. But it needs to be something that will be right at home in the afternoon. That is cake's time to shine, in my opinion.  I guess that's why they so often swing in the other direction, to light and airy town, where I assume cocoa is what gives it the chocolate flavour. But that's not right for me either.  If chocolate is involved, then I want it to get out front and centre.

But, and here's the tricky thing, I still want it to be cake. Not chocolate mousse, or tart or what have you. I want it to be cake.

This picture from the internet looks like a good solid chocolate cake

J:  I totally agree about the cake. That airy cake of Deb's is from a Swiss roll or cream layer cake recipe. And it is great like that, and i think would be great on its own, but on its own I'd probably have to eat half of it to get my chocolate fill. I think we are really after the same thing here. Something quite chocolatey, not a fudge packer, but with a hint of fudgeyness. But really, just a good chocolatey cake. With a nice crumb (whatever that means), moist, great with tea in the afternoon, enough to satisfy a chocolate craving and cake craving. Chocolate cake!

I am really looking forward to this experiment!

K: I think we are totally looking for the same thing, which is going to make it a particularly useful experiment. I'm really excited too. I'm going to start looking up recipes and start a matrix! 

Woot!

Miss Soft Crab is bi-doona-curious (PM)

Did you know that Russeth told me the other day that Doona is actually a brand name! Who knew?!
Also, look what I just learned on Wikipedia: "The term "duvet day" is used in some countries to describe an allowance of one or more days a year when employees can simply phone in and say that they are not coming in to work, even though they have no leave booked and are not ill. The provision of this benefit became fashionable in the late 1990s with many larger companies in the UK."

Mind=blown! But my mind's approach to the bi-doona lifestyle is more complicated,
 
When K first mentioned this double doona situation in passing last week I pretty much dismissed it straight away. Ok, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't wonder about it a little, but I thought it would not be for me. You know, the faultline. How do you manage that? Weirdly, my mum who was in a different part of Europe to K but at the same, mentioned to me that they started personalising doonas in Poland where she'd never seen it before. Other parts of Europe, too.  She told me it was great, but this is a lady that's been married for about a million years, maybe she likes sticking to her side of the bed. Maybe  an arm getting cold if she slings it over her partner isn't an issue. But me, that's what I thought about. What if I want to cuddle my boyfriend. Surely I'd risk cold body parts or doubling doona coverage, making excess heat. So many potential problems. But I guess it would be a lie to say I wasn't a little bi-doona curious. I like how when it is cold sharing a doona means there is twice the body heat in there. But I guess I don't like how if your body is running at a differ temperature to your bedfellow it can cause all sorts of coverage issue. I also don't like how if you have a small child in your bed who sleeps between his parents and he seems to get hot he wants to kick all the doona off leaving the tops of his parents cold and frustrated. #justsaying

So I guess right there are a couple of issues the old bi-doona situation could solve. I don't know if I could ever really get leave a single big doona lifestyle, but I wouldn't be afraid to experiment a little. I wouldn't be ashamed of it either.